YEAR-LONG POSTPONEMENT IN HLONGWA CORRUPTION CASE HIGHLIGHTS FAILURE OF THE ALL-OR-NOTHING APPROACH
The Democratic Alliance notes the year-long postponement of the corruption case against former Gauteng Health MEC Brian Hlongwa, his wife Jolene and five others, who are facing 258 charges that include fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering.
This postponement was granted yesterday at the request of the State as they were applying for the extradition of one of the accused - businessman Richard Payne - from an undisclosed country, and also because one of the accused is appealing a racketeering certificate.
It is very disappointing that this case continues to drag out for events that occurred 14 years ago, including the award of a R1.2 billion tender to the Baoki consortium in 2008 to set up a health information system and electronic health record. They were paid more than R400 million before their contract was cancelled a year later with no system installed.
There is strong evidence that Hlongwa received kickbacks from other tenders issued when he was the Health MEC.
The Gauteng Health Department has never recovered from this early example of state capture which diverted money that should have been used to treat patients in our hospitals.